We all know that feeling — the sinking dread that settles in your stomach when you realize that it’s already 8:00pm, and you’re still working on the assignment that’s supposed to be submitted in four hours (and was supposed to be finished yesterday, if everything went to plan). Or actually, some readers may not know this feeling – because they know how to make changes to their work habits so that they can engage in goal-oriented behavior. How do they do this? The article below discusses some pointers for making changes to your actions so that you can get things done when you want and need to.
Limit Distractions
It sounds trite, but preventing yourself from having access to distractions is one of the most effective ways to avoid falling into a cycle of doomscrolling, playing video games, or watching YouTube shorts (or whatever your vice is). An ounce of cure is worth a pound of prevention, and oftentimes when you reach for your distraction, it becomes incredibly difficult to tear yourself away from it and get back to your work. Some personality psychologists have discovered that refusing to pay attention to a stimulus is the easiest way to regulate yourself, and in the same vein, redirecting your attention away from distractions is a much easier form of regulation than trying to stop doomscrolling once you’ve started. Some ways to achieve a distractionless state include heading to the library and leaving your phone at home, studying with friends who promise to keep you accountable, or doing your homework in a technology-free zone.
Play To Your Strengths
Some personality psychologists believe that each person’s ability to stay disciplined and complete tasks is linked strongly to the Big Five trait Conscientiousness, which includes traits such as being able to engage in goal-oriented behavior and the ability to complete tasks you don’t want to complete. The thing about conscientiousness is that it’s not just one personality trait – it has various different facets. That means that although a person may be naturally “low” in conscientiousness, they likely score above average on one of the conscientiousness facets – it’s just that their overall conscientiousness score is being “lowered” by lower scores on other conscientiousness facets. So, if you find yourself worrying that your conscientiousness levels are on the lower side, don’t panic – first figure out which facets you score higher on, and then play to those facets. For example, if your dutifulness facet is on the higher side, try reframing your tasks in a way that indicates how completing these tasks will greatly help out others, or remind yourself that other people are depending on you to finish these tasks, and you can be a great help to others by finishing your work.
Find A Good Role Model
Many of the most important life lessons that we learn come from people we care about and respect. As I started to look towards improving my work habits, I found that my role model became my high school chemistry teacher, who often lectured on the importance of being a diligent student and on doing your best, or in other words, doing everything within your reach and sphere of control to achieve success. Because my role model was an individual who I highly respected and admired, it was easier to take his words to heart and try to figure out what about his advice was so important and life-altering to him that he chose to incorporate it in his everyday life. For many people, a role model for conscientiousness and diligence can be a parent who worked very hard to support them when they were growing up, a teacher who did everything they could to ensure that their student succeeded, or even a younger individual, such as a younger sibling, who inspires them to be responsible and reminds them of why they are deciding to make a change to their work habits.
Clarify Your Purpose
This is the piece of information that I’ve personally found to be most helpful for rewriting my work habits. In conjunction with the above tips, it can be a very powerful tool for increasing your ability to follow through with goal-oriented actions. When I suggest to clarify your purpose for your actions, what I mean is that it’s important to have a truly clear idea of what is necessitating your change in work habits, what you hope to see happen when you change your work habits, and what goal you want to achieve by focusing on your level of conscientiousness. Some common reasons for a work habit shift in young adults can include (more frighteningly) the realization that the “real world” comes after college, or the realization that being a dependable person gives you the ability to support others. Some common goals that college students have can include wanting to be able to support yourself after graduation so that you can be independent, or wanting to gain a well-paying job so you can support your parents in retirement.
Clarifying your purpose also includes cognitively reframing some of your thoughts and emotions in a way that’s helpful to you. Understand that a lot of the anxiety that naturally comes from having to rush an assignment before the deadline is a feeling that’s telling you that what’s happening isn’t very good for your well-being and security, and that you should attempt to avoid feeling that stressful emotion by completing your work earlier. One of the reframing messages I’ve found most helpful over the past half year is to think of myself as either taking action or not taking action. While it can feel very challenging to initially apply this type of thinking, I’ve found that it’s very helpful for ensuring that I don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a task will be easy and that I can put it off for later, only to later realize that the task was more difficult or time consuming that I initially expected.
Remember to pull together all of the advice above by always keeping your goal in mind and utilizing these tips when it brings you closer to your goal. Although this is not an exhaustive list of all the ways you can change your work habits to better achieve your goals, these are some foundational rules on diligence that come to the forefront of my mind most readily when I consider my own quest to change my work habits.